Washington (CNN) – Hillary Clinton has been able to exist slightly above politics for the last six years.

That will soon be coming to an end.

Clinton, the former secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, has committed to play a sizable role in fundraising for the party ahead of the 2014 elections, according to sources and aides for different campaign groups.

Kansas City, Missouri (CNN) – Days before Congress' summer break begins, President Barack Obama used a Wednesday morning speech here to lambast Republicans who are preparing to sue him rather than take action on some of his agenda items.

“Stop being mad all the time,” Obama chided Republicans during rowdy, campaign-style remarks. “Stop just hatin’ all the time.”FULL POST

(CNN) - The female Democratic candidate who hopes to topple Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is out with a new television ad hitting him where Democrats think he is highly vulnerable - with women voters.

The ad is the latest in a series in which Alison Grimes uses real voters to pose questions for McConnell. In this ad, Kentucky resident Illene Woods asks why he voted "two times against the Violence Against Women Act. … and against enforcing equal pay for women?”

Los Angeles (CNN) – Ramping up his populist economic message as midterm elections near, President Barack Obama on Thursday singled out large companies that maneuver through legal loopholes to avoid paying U.S. taxes as “corporate deserters.”

Those firms have effectively renounced any allegiance to their home country, Obama claimed during remarks at a community college here.

(CNN) - Olivia Pope may be the best crisis manager - real or fictional - to ever grace Washington.

But that doesn't mean the situations on "Scandal" are anything close to what President Barack Obama wants to see play out in real life.

Speaking during a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of the show's creator, Shonda Rhimes, Obama used a now-familiar phrase - "phony scandals" - to describe what he sees as a petty obsession among the political class. FULL POST

Washington (CNN) - It appears the George Washington Bridge controversy New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's dealing with this year back in the Garden State hasn't affected his standing as one of the GOP's most potent fundraising rainmakers.

The Republican Governors Association announced Thursday that it's raised $60 million since Christie was elected chairman of the organization last November.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Menendez, dogged by a federal corruption probe, was the target of a Cuban intelligence smear plot that managed to fool the FBI and media into investigating.

That's the allegation from Menendez's lawyer, who has asked the Justice Department to investigate, a person familiar with the request confirmed to CNN.

It's a dramatic twist to an already sensational story that involved allegations that Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, traveled to have sex with underage Dominican prostitutes. Those stories, shopped to journalists around Washington for months, were published on a conservative news website before the purported prostitutes recanted and the FBI found no merit in the matter.

(CNN) - Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the Supreme Court's view of campaign finance at a Tuesday event, telling an audience in Portland, Oregon, that the judicial body's ruling will limit the number of people involved in the political process.

"With the rate the Supreme Court is going, there will only be three or four people in the whole country that have to finance our entire political system by the time they are done," Clinton said during the question and answer portion of an appearance at The World Affairs Council of Oregon.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 ruling to allow more private money in electoral politics by removing a limit on the total number of candidates one can donate to in one election season.